Günter Grass

Author profile

born

October 16, 1927 in Free City of Danzig, Poland

gender

male

genre

Literature & Fiction

About this author

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Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author and playwright.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). Since 1945, he has lived in West Germany (now Germany), but in his fiction he frequently returns to the Danzig of his childhood.
He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum, a key text in European magic realism. His works frequently have a strong left wing, socialist political dimension, and Grass has been an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 2006, Grass caused a controversy with his disclosure of Waffen-SS service during the final months of World War II.

Grass was born in the Free City of Danzig on 16 October 1927, to Willy Grass (1899-1979), a Protestant ethnic German, an...more Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author and playwright.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). Since 1945, he has lived in West Germany (now Germany), but in his fiction he frequently returns to the Danzig of his childhood.
He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum, a key text in European magic realism. His works frequently have a strong left wing, socialist political dimension, and Grass has been an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 2006, Grass caused a controversy with his disclosure of Waffen-SS service during the final months of World War II.

Grass was born in the Free City of Danzig on 16 October 1927, to Willy Grass (1899-1979), a Protestant ethnic German, and Helene Grass (née Knoff, 1898-1954), a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin. Grass was raised a Catholic. His parents had a grocery store with an attached apartment in Danzig-Langfuhr (now Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz). He has one sister, who was born in 1930.

Grass attended the Danzig Gymnasium Conradinum. He volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine "to get out of the confinement he felt as a teenager in his parents' house" which he considered - in a very negative way - civic Catholic lower middle class. In 1943 he became a Luftwaffenhelfer, then he was drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and in November 1944, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, into the Waffen-SS. The seventeen-year-old Grass saw combat with the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg from February 1945 until he was wounded on 20 April 1945 and sent to an American POW camp.

In 1946 and 1947 he worked in a mine and received a stonemason's education. For many years he studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, then at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He also worked as an author and travelled frequently. He married in 1954 and since 1960 has lived in Berlin as well as part-time in Schleswig-Holstein. Divorced in 1978, he remarried in 1979. From 1983 to 1986 he held the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Arts).(less)

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Books by Günter Grass

Average rating: 3.78 · 16,612 ratings · 1,232 reviews · 105 distinct works

	The Tin Drum 3.94 avg rating — 9,456 ratings — published 1959 — 106 editions	My rating:
	Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator) 3.53 avg rating — 1,254 ratings — published 1961 — 41 editions	My rating:
	Crabwalk by Günter Grass, Krishna Winston (Translator), Günter Grass 3.47 avg rating — 619 ratings — published 2004 — 22 editions	My rating:
	Dog Years by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator), Günter Grass 3.78 avg rating — 423 ratings — published 1963 — 23 editions	My rating:
	The Flounder by Günter Grass, Günter Grass 3.75 avg rating — 446 ratings — published 1977 — 22 editions	My rating:
	Peeling the Onion by Günter Grass, Michael Henry Heim (Translator), Günter Grass 3.71 avg rating — 400 ratings — published 2006 — 22 editions	My rating:
	My Century 3.43 avg rating — 409 ratings — published 1998 — 24 editions	My rating:
	The Rat by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator), Günter Grass 3.44 avg rating — 218 ratings — published 1986 — 20 editions	My rating:
	Local Anaesthetic by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator), Günter Grass 3.40 avg rating — 164 ratings — published 1969 — 6 editions	My rating:
	The Danzig Trilogy: The Tin Drum / Cat and Mouse / Dog Years by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator) 4.29 avg rating — 112 ratings — published 1987 — 7 editions	My rating:

More books by Günter Grass…

Series by Günter Grass

The Danzig Trilogy (3 books)
by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator), Günter Grass

3.89 avg rating — 11,245 ratings

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Quotes by Günter Grass

“Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

tags: first-sentence

16 people liked it

“An empty bus hurtles through the starry night
Perhaps the driver is singing
and happy because he sings.”
― Günter Grass

tags: happiness

8 people liked it

“Because men
are killing the forests
the fairy tales are running away.
The spindle doesn't know
whom to prick,
the little girl's hands
that her father has chopped off,
haven't a single tree to catch hold of,
the third wish remains unspoken.
King Thrushbeard no longer owns one thing.
Children can no longer get lost.
The number seven means no more than exactly seven.
Because men have killed the forests,
the fairy tales are trotting off to the cities
and end badly.”
― Günter Grass, Rat

8 people liked it

See all Günter Grass's quotes »

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